Justice
by Chrys-DASL
Summary: When the world discovers that Principal Haney used his position and power to coax students to do things they shouldn't, Elwood City is swarmed with reporters. But only the victims and their families are allowed inside, and it is Arthur and Bitzi who share the story with the world. One-shot. For my Summer 100 challenge. R&R.


JUSTICE

Arthur looked up at the courtroom around him. He never expected to be here, at least not for something like this. He was watching a figure from his childhood go down in one of the most disgusting cases their area had ever heard, and apparently much of America too. News trucks from CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and other top networks mingled with the local affiliates as they jockeyed to get the most exclusive story from the trial. The person that fell to at the moment was Bitzi Baxter, and Arthur was her personal escort to the trial. He sat beside her, a bag full of extra pens (blue and black ink), legal pads, and White Out sitting between his feet.

Around them the community gathered and only the community. These were the victims of the case, and each name was checked off as if they were being admitted to an exclusive club. Arthur realized he was a part of his club during his first day at court, when the defendant was brought in to face his charges and make his pleas. Arthur remembered it clearly:

" _Francis Haney, you are hereby charged with seven hundred fifty-six counts of child pornography, one thousand counts of child endangerment, and two counts of public indecency. How do you plead?" the judge questioned._

" _Not guilty," Haney responded, his voice weak and broken. He couldn't even look up. It was the face of guilt even if he couldn't admit it._

Arthur swallowed as he remembered the grand jury. He knew he'd be going to the trial because of his job at the newspaper, his position as Bitzi's official courtroom assistant. But then an officer showed up to the door with multiple subpoena documents, their blue paper seeming to glow supernaturally as Jane took them in her hands. She turned back to Arthur, just a few days past eighteen, with tears in her eyes.

The story came out in court, the only time Arthur wasn't at Bitzi's side. He and DW went to Principal Haney's house when he was almost eleven. DW was seven and in second grade, one of his favorite students. He'd invited them over to check out his new pool to see if the entire class would enjoy it. Arthur remembered that fateful moment clearly, when the camera appeared in Haney's hands. He'd just climbed the ladder to the diving board, his swim trunks hanging on a tree limb nearby.

"That's good, very good," Haney said, smiling as he took pictures. Arthur jumped, feeling self-conscious to be doing such a thing naked in front of his principal, his little sister. Nudity wasn't accepted and never would be in their modern society. Kids wore clothes and never, ever, ever thought about genitalia or what they were called or how big or small they were. Kids were innocent and didn't think about that kind of thing. But he knew Haney was looking, photographing him. And he knew that was wrong.

DW was naked too but Arthur took off his glasses, refusing to see even though he'd seen before. He didn't want her photographed but he was powerless. He was eleven. What could he say to a sick-minded adult who wanted to look at children's genitals? It wasn't his place.

But it was now for eighteen-year-old Arthur. He was asked during the grand jury how he felt about the matter, and he was honest with himself and the court:

"I think it's disgusting. Children are supposed to be children. What he did, just by looking, just by taking those photos and writing those disgusting stories to go with them, was…it was inhumane. How dare he? Before that day, I never even thought about it. Now I think about it every day. How dare he take our innocence? We were never supposed to think about those things, naked children, yet there's the evidence. It's all there, all the children he ruined."

Arthur removed himself from his memories and realized a lot of those children were around him today. Binky and Mei-Lin, who were brought in a similar fashion. Binky wasn't photographed because he wasn't comfortable being naked around his innocent sister. That was something she shouldn't see or think about. Binky didn't want to see her either, but Haney said it was okay, and he listened. It was hot. She did deserve a cooler dip if she wanted it, and she did. But the camera was menacing. What did he need that for?

Even Brain was among the victims, one of the hundreds Haney exploited, using power and logic to coax them into nudity, into a world they didn't belong to. They were raised to keep their clothes on, and if they were raised around siblings, the parts they could see when unclothed were never spoken about, even parts as simple as toes. They understood now. Those were sexualized things, and while many agreed that adults could choose to reveal however much they wanted, kids were to be clothed, and their friends were to be clothed, and they were to know nothing of size, shape, color—it wasn't to be discussed, and none did because they knew sick-minded people like Principal Haney would turn it into something else, something it shouldn't be. Because naked children aren't innocent when people like him are around. It becomes indecent and lewd, not because of the children but because of a grown man using those photos for his own gain.

The trial was past feelings now. It was all facts, facts Bitzi struggled to write down. She was the only reporter allowed, and she knew the weight of the nation's gaze now sat on her shoulders, looking out into a courtroom they could only see through her words. She spent hours turning her hand-written notes into text to send out to everyone in the nation, then the world. People wanted to know about this case.

It was winding down now and Arthur knew it. Victims testified one after the other, including him, but not on the stand. The photos took the place of real people, as the court did not want to upset the victims any more than they had to. Those who could circled the room, some of them standing along the walls. The younger ones sat cross-legged in the center aisle, only shifting to let experts pass. The defense wanted to say Haney was ill, that he thought he was making art being purchased by people who wanted to appreciate it, not child molesters who would use those photos for their own gain. The stories were the same—the text that went with him, that he posted seemingly anonymously on the internet—were tracked and linked to the same need to create art.

The prosecution called in their experts too. Haney knew what he was doing, they said, because people told him. Public comments revealed people hated his work. They wanted it gone because he was exploiting children. He tried to correct his issue, revealing his guilt, but then his sick urges pushed him to keep posting, to toss those people from his sight. Private conversations showed his downfall. People asked him and begged of him, then they threatened him to remove the content. The most damning evidence of all were the conversations with real agents who'd found the sold photos and realized the stories were connected too. They talked to him and discovered yes, he wrote the pieces. He meant what he said. Children were adults to him, and he thought they had the same sexualized thoughts he did about genitalia and other body parts. He saw nothing wrong with it, even with people telling him.

As Arthur watched day after day, his face a stern scowl, he knew Haney would be found guilty, but most of all, he knew he wouldn't fare well in prison. Others knew it too, but none of them cared anymore. Haney used to be respected. He used to be their friend. But once they realized he wasn't innocent, they didn't care what happened to him. And Arthur had seen documentaries, real security footage from inside the world's prisons. As soon as they figured out you'd hurt a child, even psychologically, you were dead meat, history. The murders were brutal, often committed by countless angry men or women. The women were the worst, Arthur realized. Haney wouldn't have to deal with them, but men were equally bad. They were stronger and knew more about tools and how to make them. Haney would see those tools. He knew that. They all knew that.

Bitzi tried to remain objective but she knew that too, and she refused to let herself lose sleep over it. Let him get charged and sent to prison. Let him die there. No one minded anymore because he had ruined their entire community. She wouldn't write that, no. She'd stay in strict third-person and would keep her personal opinion out of it.

But on her blog, when the verdict was read, she spent three hours letting her personal followers—whose numbers had grown by thousands—know exactly how she felt:

 **Francis Haney stole my son's innocence when he asked him to carry home a basket of large tomatoes and other organic produce from our community garden. He encouraged him to take off his clothes, take a dip in that disgusting pool. He photographed him and wrote a story of how he wished it had gone, how he wished to show Buster his own penis so they could compare sizes. Buster would be amazed. Would it really get that big? Yes, and because of Francis Haney, Buster would never want to use it. He'd never be able to, because when he realized later what that day meant, he grew too sick to take it.**

 **You see, my son lost his father a few years ago to an accident, and he wasn't the same. He only spent time with a few friends, and he kept himself locked in his room. That's where I found him, the article about the photos up on his computer, a straight razor in his hand. I can't even go in there, not because of the memories of him weighing me down, but because I can't get that damn spot out. I blame him for that too.**

She wrote more, but soon she grew tired and wrote the real article: Haney was guilty. The jury voted for the maximum sentence, whatever the judge wanted that to be. If she did the math correctly, that would be a life sentence by proxy, an instance of the numbers adding well beyond the years he plausibly had left.

But the judge could've been lenient with a one, two, even a five year sentence. Bitzi deduced it would take three months really. He could be given three months and justice would serve its course:

 **I've read about these things, and it's become common knowledge that criminals aren't as heartless as we think. That biker fellow who killed three people in a knife fight over meth? If he finds out you touched a kid, even thought a single impure thought about a kid, he'll kill you. Why? Because he thinks children are innocent creatures who shouldn't be damned to a life of misery, an eternity of sick thoughts and suicide wishes, because of someone else's sick actions. Even criminals have a conscious, and what's one more charge on their sheet if it means getting rid of another sick perp?**

Arthur would come across her blog a few months later and remember he'd had the same thoughts. He knew Haney wouldn't make it in prison, and they were right. Within three weeks the people in his cellblock knew, but bureaucracy meant Haney was stuck there. Four men beat him to a pulp, shoving shanks in his corpse, because of what he'd done. All four said it wasn't enough because they knew there was lasting damage because of what Haney did, and when Arthur read Bitzi's blog and the line about the carpet stain and its link to Haney, he knew it was right. He wasn't the same anymore because of the other damage, the death of his friend, but he knew that's what pushed him over the edge. He couldn't live with himself knowing the story was out there, that perverts across the country could think about him during sexual acts. Buster couldn't live with those repercussions, and Arthur didn't want to either. But he'd gone this far so he'd keep on going, his strength coming from the knowledge that men none of them knew did what they couldn't.

~End

A/N: This is for my Summer 100 One-Shot Challenge. Hope you guys enjoyed it.


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